She was encouraged to reveal her medical device after hearing of Nicole Johnson, who wore her own pump while competing in the competition in 1999.

"My whole perspective changed," Sandison has written on her blog in an entry entitled 'Defeating Diabetes', where she calls for the stigma against the disease to end.

"That decision took me two long years to make, " she explains. "When I first started competing, I was using injections rather than a pump. I didn't want people to see a weird-tubey-machine-thing attached to me all the time, and could not wrap my head around having a medical device on my body for the rest of my life. Then, I heard about Nicole Johnson..."

Sandison's pump pride has started a hashtag sharing craze, with #showmeyourpump seeing women, men, kids, all showing off pictures of their device.